Jim Johnson is Larry's father and was Lisa's husband until he left the family under mysterious circumstances.
Appearance
Jim had a bald head, thick eyebrows, and a handlebar mustache, both russet red. His eyes were green. He appeared middle-aged and is depicted wearing a leather jacket and green shirt.
As the Phantom, Jim appeared as a corrupted, disembodied face.
After residing in the void for eons, his soul has become a thin, pitch-black humanoid figure with streams of nebula protruding from his head and upper back.
Personality
Little is known about Jim's personality. In his journal, he writes about caring deeply for his family and becomes very emotional when tragedy befalls them. Larry also recalls that his parents hardly ever fought and that they loved each other very much. This suggests that Jim was a loving father and husband before his disappearance.
Biography
Jim Johnson, formerly known as Zarinthkampt 42-79, was a resident of an unknown world, living a peaceful and happy life amongst a society of technologically advanced individuals beside his sister and nephews. But it was not to last; the Plague of Shadows quickly seized dominion of the planet and consumed Jim's nephews, leaving him and his devastated sister Evelyn to flee from their doomed home.
After months drifting aimlessly through space, Jim found Earth and opted to land their ship despite his fears and uncertainties. Misfortune once again befell Jim when his sister vanished without a trace, sending his emotionally crippled being to seek refuge in Addison Apartments where he was greeted by the enigmatic Alyson Rosenberg and the lovely Lisa Garcia.
Throughout his stay, he was plagued with mass hallucinations of his beloved sister Evelyn. Jim became infatuated with Lisa after all she had done to help him adjust to the apartments and eventually asked for her hand a year after his arrival.
Despite continued nightmares of Evelyn, Jim lived out a happy life and eventually became the proud father of Larry. His happiness soon came to yet another end when after encountering what he believed to be one of the shadows that had doomed his former home, he began to suspect something sinister was occurring at the complex.
In 1983, after his nightmares began to depict the death of his new family, Jim joined the Devourers of God with the intent to learn more about the cult and their plans in order to protect his family.
In 1984, the day after Larry killed Mrs. Gibson's pet rabbit by accident with his firecrackers, Jim left his family in order to sabotage the cult’s plan to mass murder children across the globe in their efforts to stop the Child of the Abomination. While the details of what followed are not entirely clear, it is heavily implied that he was killed during this endeavor.
Following his death, Jim’s soul wandered the void for eons, searching for a way back to his world. Eventually, he came across a "bridge" that allowed him to do so. Through this bridge, Jim was able to communicate and help Sal Fisher in his efforts to thwart the cult, appearing to Sal as a "phantom". However, this came at the cost of his humanity, and after using the bridge numerous times, his soul became something that was "no longer human."
Jim first appeared to Sal in the treehouse to make an effort to communicate with the boy but was only able to give reversed and chopped up dialogue; the only eligible words he spoke were "red ball", the sign that he was making contact with Sal.
The Phantom of Jim offers Sal indecipherable garbled communication throughout the events of the Bologna Incident and the death of Mrs. Packerton.
He emerged five years later after all of the residents of Addison Apartments had been infected by the dark to reassure Sal that killing all those infected by the darkness was necessary in order to prevent it from spreading.
When Dr. Enon was unintentionally scared into plummeting to his death at the sight of Larry’s ghost, Jim was quick to report it to Sal as well as deliver a warning that "73 hours remain," foreshadowing his trial and the death penalty.
Following Sal's execution, Jim’s soul resided in the House in the Void, tinkering with various inventions to feed the fascination his career as an engineer once gave him. On the day Ashley Campbell visited Sal's grave, Sal was guided through the void back to Jim by the Mother Tree. Thanks to Jim's guidance, Sal managed to collect the pieces of his fragmented soul, align the pyramids of Asintmah thus allowing him to return to the physical plane, and finish what he had started.
Dialogue
Jim himself doesn't necessarily speak. However, he appears to Sal as The Phantom in Larry's Tree House in The Wretched. He makes brief appearances to Sal in dreams three days before the boy's trial to share the death of Dr. Enon in The Bologna Incident.
The Bologna Incident also includes two chopped up and mysterious dialogues throughout Sal's schoolday and investigation of Mrs. Packerton's apartment room 201. When filling in the missing letters from one of them with the letters from the other you get a text that reads backward "You must unbind yourself from this world, Sal. You are not like the others. You are unique.".
The Trial also includes him appearing to Sal as The Phantom in Mr. Addison's room in Addison Apartments after Sal picks up the knife.
Trivia
- Larry is not at all like his father appearance-wise, but he inherited his love for Metal music from him.
- All the strange things in the apartment occur before Jim's appearance, however this is likely due to the fact that the Devourers of God have been in operation since the 17th Century.
- According to Larry, Jim used to live Room 503 of Addison Apartments before he and Lisa got together.
- Jim Johnson is playable in Chapter 2 of In Seeking Providence.
- Based on Chapter 6 of In Seeking Providence, Jim was present when the Devourers of God sacrificed their female cultist to a shadow.
- The code that is required to access Jim's letter to Lisa in Memories and Dreams is 1983, the year he was initiated into the cult.
Gallery
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